November 5, 2006

I'm going to miss those old, giant mechanical lever machines. They're a part of my mechanical past like the giant Linotype typesetter, the slide rule and the Super 8 movie projector. I remember holding my 2-year-old granddaughter while I voted for Bill Clinton. She's almost 13 now.

I know, the machines can break down. We had to have a new election in Middletown in 2004 when one of the machines failed to record votes for one candidate. It wasn't anything evil, it just broke.

The jury's still out on the new touch-screen models. A lot of people don't trust them. Hey, a lot of people didn't trust electricity in the beginning. They thought it would leak into the room from uncovered outlets.

I carried the concept of this idea around for a few days before I could come up with the punch line, which is of course "cash back." When I was finally able to focus on it, I thought of the screen I see most of the time, the ATM screen.

I hope it works out for everybody and we have a fair election -- at least until the Democrats master the technology well enough to steal elections the way the Republicans do.